The First Evangelical Church of the Atheistic Promulgation of Richard Dawkins is having its first schism. Awwww. Isn’t that so cute. And guess what, poor widdle Dawkins doesn’t like to be called names. Poor thing. The Times Online reports:
Richard Dawkins is accustomed to provoking the wrath of religious communities, but now a schism seems to have opened up within the atheist community who make up his fan-base.
The split occurred after he announced that a discussion section on his website, considered one of the busiest online atheist forums, would in future be tightly moderated and “irrelevant postings and frivolous gossip” would no longer be allowed.
The change was scheduled for next month but such was the torrent of abuse after the announcement that the forum had to be locked down, deepening the rift between Professor Dawkins and his 85,000 online fans.
Writing on RichardDawkins.net yesterday, in a posting entitled “Outrage”, he said that there was “something rotten” in internet culture and pledged to rid his website of its abusive element.
“Imagine seeing your face described by an anonymous poster, as ‘a slack-jawed turd-in-the-mouth mug’,” he wrote. “Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial.
“Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical.”
Awww. Poor Dawkins. Some big bad bully atheist calling sweety-kins a mean name. Don’t listen to them Richie. Hey, you know what it’s kinda’ like though. It’s like when Dawkins hysterically called the Pope a stupid murderer. Remember Dawkins said:
“The Pope is either stupid, ignorant or dim. If people take his words seriously he will be responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions of people.”
Kind of ironic that Dawkins doesn’t like to be called names, huh?
The best part is that Dawkins’ followers are shocked…shocked I tell you…to discover that Dawkins sometimes paints with a bit of a broad brush. Because the atheist forum has been closed, his minions and even some website moderators have taken to other forums to denounce Dawkins’ tactics.
“A lot of people have lost respect for Dawkins after this, although I do still support the work that he does,” said Peter Harrison, a former moderator.
“Thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them.”
Another former fan said: “It may sound ridiculous to those not involved with online communities, but I feel hurt and displaced. It was like coming home to find the locks have been changed. My respect for Richard’s work is still intact but my respect for him as a person is in tatters.”
So from now on, all those freethinkers shouldn’t be so free anymore, I guess. He said, “The forum is going to be more tightly controlled and will be under more central control. So it won’t be available for anyone who wants to sound off freely.”
Who is Dawkins to silence atheists? Who is he to put limits on people who voluntarily join his club? Next he’ll be telling them they have to be celibate or something.
So, in short, an atheist is complaining there’s no uniform standard of decency. Hey, chin up Richie and remember:
Sticks and stones may break your bones
But nothing really matters anyway.
